“Do you say that it is always good to be a non-conformist because you believe that, almost necessarily, the establishment—the institutions—embody the worst rather than the best of humankind? That, under such circumstances, dissent is almost necessarily the proper relationship to one’s society?”

This provocative question was posed on February 26, 1968, by William F. Buckley Jr., then host of the public affairs program Firing Line. Buckley, a prominent American intellectual and conservative commentator, was the founder of the National Review. His guest that evening was the late British journalist and caustic social critic Malcolm Muggeridge, whose short answer framed the power and dissent relationship in an uncommon spiritual context.

Just three years before the program aired, white southerners’ violent resistance to equality and justice was laid bare by the civil rights movement. Peaceful dissenters marching from Selma to Montgomery were brutally attacked by law enforcement on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Two years prior, Black citizens protesting Jim Crow segregation policies in Birmingham were met with snarling dogs, billy clubs, and high-pressure fire hoses. In part, the appalling scenes, broadcast on national television newscasts, helped galvanize public support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The former outlawed segregation. The latter prohibited racial disenfranchisement at the ballot box.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from [killing] me.” Yet, more than a half-century after these landmark laws were passed, the continued unequal application of justice has cast doubt on the latter part of King’s statement. Repeatedly, the American public has witnessed—via viral videos— law enforcement officers terrorizing and killing Black and Brown Americans in the light of day. And yet, many in power continue to deny the persistence of the same bigotry that underpinned the Jim Crow era. Even worse, political leaders who deliberately sow division and hatred are celebrated by supporters as if divinely inspired.

Prejudice, of course, is not confined to any one group. History shows that bias exists in human beings in varying degrees. And in any society, the dominant group, whether consciously or not, often uses its power to institutionalize its bias. In the Americas, the Aztecs oppressed other tribes to build an empire. Similarly, European colonizers who established the foundations of modern governance in the Americas have long used public policy to diminish the worth of people of color.

In this historic backdrop, Muggeridge addressed the question of power and dissent. Invoking the New Testament’s Book of Matthew—where the Devil tempts Jesus in the wilderness, offering him all the kingdoms and splendor of the world if he will kneel before him—Muggeridge suggests that evil in the world stems from mortals’ failure to resist the Devil’s offer of power, as Jesus did.

“Well, I think… Power is the Devil. The Devil has power in his gift,” said Muggeridge, then a self-proclaim agnostic. “And if men have power, it has been given to them by the Devil, not by God—because God does not traffic in power.”

I first watched this Firing Line episode as a college student in the 1980s, during the rise of the Moral Majority—a politically influential right-wing Christian group and precursor of today’s extreme Christian nationalist movement. That is why Muggeridge’s words still resonate and underscore the fact that the choices citizens in a society make —political, electoral, or otherwise—determine whether spiritually bankrupt and corrupt individuals reign over a nation.

Ultimately, Buckley’s timeless question and Muggeridge’s startling answer remind us that power and dissent are inseparably linked, and that the struggle between good and evil in the world is unending.